The UK Government is realistically ambitious in terms of achieving two objectives: (a) the continued exchange of personal data between the UK and the EU, and (b) the ICO’s participation in the One Stop Shop mechanism of regulatory oversight.
The ability to exchange data between the UK and the EU is certainly within everyone's interest and the UK Government has been consistently clear about that. The White Paper confirms that the UK is ready to begin preliminary discussions on an adequacy assessment so that a data protection agreement is in place by the end of the implementation period at the latest, to provide the earliest possible reassurance that data flows can continue. Given the recent adoption of the GDPR as the UK's own data protection framework, optimism in this respect is not ill-founded. Ensuring an active role for the ICO among the other EU data protection authorities may prove more challenging. However, it is beyond doubt the ICO has more than proved its credentials as a robust and influential regulator, so allowing an ongoing participation of the ICO in the activities of the EU European Data Protection Board will ultimately benefit EU citizens as much as global organisations.
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